Melanie Phillips Backs Anti-Semites

After Combover Crybaby Donald Trump’s latest bad decision, to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, has come protest from around the world, but most visibly on the border between Israel and Gaza. Here, Palestinians armed with nothing more offensive than slings have been attacked by the IDF with tear gas - and live ammunition.

This resulted in yesterday’s toll of more than 50 deaths, and hundreds of injuries. Hospitals in Gaza were overwhelmed. Counties such as South Africa have registered their displeasure by recalling ambassadors. Ireland has summoned the Israeli ambassador to explain his Government’s actions. But the Trump family, and its supporters, have enjoyed their photo-opportunities, as have some in the UK.

To no surprise, one of those giving unequivocal support to Trump’s latest folly is Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips, who has proclaimed “Embassy move points the way to peace, truth and justice. Bravo, America”. The truth is that peace in this case is scores of deaths, and justice dispensed through the barrel of a gun.

But what Ms Phillips appears to have missed, in her rush to endorse The Donald’s latest attempt to shore up his domestic base, is exactly who it is with whom she is making common cause. And for someone normally so alert to the presence of those peddling anti-Semitism, she has fallen down badly here - very badly indeed.

The New York Times brought Mel her first slice of bad news as it told “Robert Jeffress, a Dallas pastor who led a prayer at the opening ceremony of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, has said Judaism is sending its followers to hell”. Is Madam still comfortable in her endorsement of the Combover Crybaby’s latest gesture?

Then, after noting John Simpson’s comment that the day’s death toll at the Israel-Gaza border had reached 41, Jonathan Freedland added “And, at the very same moment, US and Israeli dignitaries are at a ceremony opening the new US embassy in Jerusalem, lavishing praise on Donald Trump for his ‘magnificent tribute to peace’”.

To the hypocrisy was now added yet more brazen anti-Semitism, as Freedland noted. “Closing proceedings at the US embassy opening in Jerusalem with a blessing is Pastor John Hagee, pedlar of antisemitic conspiracy theory who suggested the Holocaust was God's will”. Hagee “claims Adolf Hitler was a ‘half-breed Jew’ and states … that Hitler was sent by God, as a ‘hunter,’ to persecute Europe’s Jews and drive them towards ‘the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have-Israel.’”

Charles Pierce, writing yesterday in Esquire magazine, described Jeffress and Hagee as “two completely batshit-insane TV preachers with long histories of supporting Israel because it allegedly will be largely set-decoration for the end times”. That is where the motivation for moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem comes from.

Pierce also noted that “Jared [Kushner] and Ivanka Trump already have met with a conservative rabbi who thinks black people are monkeys”. So that’s a little blatant racism on the side, too. Melanie Phillips should have looked before she leapt.

“Going wherever the evidence leads” says Mel’s website. Next stop obscurity, then.